Why are buildings so darned expensive?

[OG Grenadier]

I'm going broke just keeping my buildings ticking over, let alone trying to find funds to finance an army! It's like you have to spend the first 20-30 turns of the game doing nothing but micro-managing your castles/towns to get as much wealth out of them as you can.

Candidly, I got the poos with it so much I think I must have pumped 250,000 coin into my game using the cheat just so I could get rolling on the total war side of the game.

[VaultDweller]

Suggestion: In the gamedir\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign\descr_start.txt file, every faction has a value listed for denari_kings_purse. The factions get this amount of money every turn as a bonus. For future campaigns, you could play around with modding those to mitigate money problems across the board for all factions.

[RiserX]

its not expensive
just try to build towns and use town militia and they are free

[alanschu]

The only time I have money issues is when my crusading armies finish their crusade.


If you have huge standing armies (which you don't need) you'll have money issues. I usually have a balance of around 10k florins, unless I desperately need a building or some units. I don't have exceptional problems with money.

[shadyrome]

yea its like buying a house, why is it so darn expensive?

[Ambrosius]

the most important budgetary consideration in this game is, IMO, your army upkeep.
if you are producing 30,000 florins per turn and your army upkeep is 28,000 then you are never going to have money to build the higher level buildings.

the key is to minimize the amount of settlements in your game which have to be heavily garrisoned. the units to be very wary of are ones like mailed knights, dismounted knights, etc. with their 250 upkeep. often it is wiser to even disband units and retrain them when necessary rather than keep them indefinitely in a garrison.
a unit of dismounted feudal knights costs only 570 florins to recruit, but if you keep them for 2 turns they have just cost that again in upkeep. if you know you wont be needing them for another 7-8 turns, disband them. or, if you know you dont need them *yet*, dont recruit them until they are necessary.
the 3-unit at once recruitment is very useful. often 2 cities are within range of one another. this allows you to keep only free garrisoned troops in your cities:

for example, lets say i have a huge city that is about to come under attack.
i already have 2 units of halberd militia and 4 units of pavise crossbow militia in the garrison, as well as a general. i can take that general, step him outside of the city and recruit some mercenary crossbowmen any time i need them. i also can recruit at least 3 units before i am attacked, and i can transfer part of a garrison from another city in as well. this will allow me to have an almost full garrison instantly, any time its needed. the key is not to be paying upkeep on this garrison every turn when it is *not* needed.

i have a little guideline i follow and its ensured that my games are all very profitable:
keep your army upkeep below either your taxes or trade income, and you will be fine.
remember the little pot of gold icon on the bottom right of your interface is your friend.

[Big War Bird]

Specialize your cities and castles, especialy cities You don't need every armorers everywhere nor do you need to be produce all types of troops in you castles. Devote most of your cities to building economic structures and the a minimum of other buildings to keep the people happy. Don't accept just any guild either. You don't need a theives guild where a merchant guild would be useful.

[Earendel]

No offense, it sounds like you aren't handling city mangement part well...

An easy way is the lands above Demark, or the entire British territory. Grab all of them fast and turn every province there a city with nothing but merchant guild. Since the AI is too dumb for a sea invasion (And rarely goes up north for Demarks' case.), it will mean you have 7-9 cities doing nothing but giving you easily up to 3,000 florins each.

And make full use of peasants and mercenaries early in the game, by sending them to their deaths. The dead cost nothing.

[Flavius Nevitta]

I never have problems with that. Actually I think the buildings are very cheap compared to RTW mods like RTR or EB.

In the beginning of the campaign try to go for cheap economic improvments in your towns. I always build low level market, farm, harbour first. If you play England for example you don't need a smith in London. Avoid such things. Try to build farms and such in your castles as well and only build armies you can afford and only build them for a specific purpose...to attack. There's no use in having 3 armies standing around in case someone might attack you. Keep town garrisons low and only raise them in areas where you expect an attack.

If you are not planning to expand all the time don't have useless standing armies. If you have a field army attack and sack the towns you capture. After taking a town I never leave an army there for longer than 2 or 3 rounds until the buildings are repaired and you start to build your own first buildings.

So:

-build economy buildings in your starting towns early on

-if you have an army use it

-in newly conquered towns build stuff which increases happiness first and remove your units as soon as possible

-keep garrisons low. don't use more than the free upkeep units except you know you're going to be attacked

-watch army upkeep. only raise number of armies if you still make plus after that

-if you're short on money stop building for soem time in some places where you don't really need it.For example: if you have a high level town where you'd pay 10.000 for a market, leave it and rather build 3 cheaper markets in other towns. I usually stop developing in castles which are far away from the actual combat areas if i'm in need of money and develop them later.

-check your towns sometimes! get rid of mercenaries and non free upkeep units you left behind there earlier and replace them with cheap units.

-transform useless castles to towns. No need for a castle in Inverness for example if you own the whole of France already as you won't raise troops there anyways.

-don't build fleets you don't need. If oyu have enough money you may conquer the seas but if you don't have the money don't build fleets.

-don't build useless buildings. No need for high level armourers in your towns far of the boarder. you never need the troops from there anyway.

That's it so far. hope this helps. I'm in turn 120 of my English campaign on VH/VH at the moment and I have around 100.000 florints on my account, 7 full stacks on their ways and no money probs at all.

[Tom Servo]

Very good points Cinna, i also turn on automanage tax.

[alanschu]

I have wondered about Inverness....is there much point in making it a town even?

It doesn't have any resources to trade, and in my experience the biggest thing about the towns is that they are much better traders.

[the_mango55]

I don't see what you mean (to the OP) they don't seem that expensive to me, except for the very highest level ones.

You don't have to build every building in every city you know.

[Lubeck]

I don't see what you mean (to the OP) they don't seem that expensive to me, except for the very highest level ones.

You don't have to build every building in every city you know.

But then I don't need to worry about strategy!

The only time I had a problem with money was in a recent Venice campaign when I made the mistake of recruiting a bunch of crusading spearmen to fill out an army to take Antioch.

A little tip for my crusading friends, do not use any units in addition to that you already have to go on a crusade. Those spearmen, DMK, and knights might look sexy but they hurt a LOT when the crusade is over. Better to know your financial situation will be secure even if it means you are using the same old ISM and your own DKs.

[Papal_Knight]

But then I don't need to worry about strategy!

The only time I had a problem with money was in a recent Venice campaign when I made the mistake of recruiting a bunch of crusading spearmen to fill out an army to take Antioch.

A little tip for my crusading friends, do not use any units in addition to that you already have to go on a crusade. Those spearmen, DMK, and knights might look sexy but they hurt a LOT when the crusade is over. Better to know your financial situation will be secure even if it means you are using the same old ISM and your own DKs.

yeah, that. or, fill out the crusading stack with recruited (mercenary) "religious fanatics" and the other choice (pilgrims?). they actually are great fodder and work ok in a garrison role.

they are real cheap too.

[OG Grenadier]

I think what I am trying to do fundamentally is create towns that can do anything and everything upgrade/commerce wise. I might revisit them and demolish some buildings and specialize somewhat.

[CynicalMagician]

Farms are the best way to get your income up in a hurry at the beginning of the game, because not only do they contribute farming income, but as the population of the town increases then the taxes you collect will increase as well. Other important $$ buildings are ports and markets. At the start of the game every city you have should be building farms, ports, and markets, in that order. During the first 15-20 turns of the game you're trying to do two things - grab nearby rebel cities, and pump up your economy.

At the start of the game you can wait a few turns before you build any troop producing buildings and instead focus on economy. Use lots of low level guys or mercenaries to make up any military shortfalls you have and you'll be sitting pretty.

Also, look at your garrisons and make sure you aren't overblowing them. For a 6-10k population town you shouldn't need more than 3 or 4 free militia to guard the place and keep order at normal tax, so unless you expect invasion don't bother keeping more. The way to look at army is that it's an investment you're making. You pay a bunch of money now to get troops, and then use those troops to expand your empire, sack cities, etc. In this way they pay for themselves. Thus by keeping around a lot of troops that aren't fighting, you're just wasting an investment. Spend their lives to gain territory, or disband them to save money.

[Ambrosius]

keeping taxes on automanage, or keeping taxes at their highest rate, is not a wise tactic.

it is much more beneficial to keep taxes low at the beginning of the game, and focus on the first two farming upgrades (stop after this, or else you will have severe pop problems later on).

once your cities near huge city size you can bump automanage taxes to the 'financial' setting. it may be wise to keep your generals out of cities you are speed-growing like this, as they will undoubtedly pick up the bad taxman trait. IMO this is retarded, since it is a good taxman who lowers his taxes to encourage city growth and raises them to maximum once he has 10x the taxpayers.
i generally have my generals out ranging with armies, crusading, or perhaps garrisoning a frontier castle.

[the_mango55]

meh, maybe it's just me, but I almost never build farms in cities, and I always keep taxes on high.

I find it better to have my cities grow slowly, so I can build all the happiness buildings in them, and that i don't have to spend all my money upgrading them.

[napoleonic]

why or how do we not requires much armies? I play on H/H, under attacked from every sides and having militias only are impossible, because of this now I have alsmost 20,000 troops.

[Flavius Nevitta]

why or how do we not requires much armies? I play on H/H, under attacked from every sides and having militias only are impossible, because of this now I have alsmost 20,000 troops.

I play on VH/VH as well. you can't fight everybody at once. When I was playing as France for example I was at war with Denmakr, HRE, Spain and Milan.

The thing is that fieldarmies only pay when you use them offensively but if you don't have enough money you can't have sufficient armies to attack all of your enemies. So what I did with the French in that situ was to garrison the towns which would be attacked, Amsterdam, Metz and Toulouse. Build up their fortifications and use soem militia units there. You usually don't even need a full stack garrison to completely destroy an attacking army in a siege.

Then I built 2 field armies with the best troops I could afford and attacked the Milanese first. March straight into their lands and capture their towns. When they're done I garrisoned those towns with some militia and marched my armies to spain.

There I attacked their castles first and left the towns alone. If you take Pamplona, Toledo and Granada you need max 3 rounds per fortress, 1 to build siege equipment, 1 to attack it and rebuild your troops, 1 to recruit a small garrison(or get some mercs). Then march on. By that time you can surely send a 3rd army and attack the remaining towns at once with your 3 armies.

In the meantime the HRE and Denmark lost several armies when they tried to siege Amsterdam and Metz. Each time you defeat an enemy you'll have more money and can raise another army.

When you do it like this you don't need too much money for your army.

In my current English campaign on VH/VH I did the same and recruited some more troops as soon as I was sure I could afford it. Just make sure you always have around 2000plus left.

I have 14 full stacks in my campaign now and still make 10.000 plus per round lol